CAMBRIDGE - John Kenneth Galbraith bought a copy of Le Monde there every day. Julia Child searched for obscure Italian and German cooking magazines, and Robert Frost once stopped by - it actually was a snowy evening - to get directions to a reading. Over the years, pretty much anyone looking for news from far and near, be they eminent professors or the masses rushing to work on the Red Line, found it at Out of Town News.

But the landmark shop, an axis at the center of Harvard Square's bustle, may be about to go away.

The owner, now a chain vendor, has notified Cambridge officials that it does not plan to renew its lease Jan. 31, saying the public appetite for printed news has all but vanished.

"It is not the profitable location for us that it once was," said Laura Samuels, spokeswoman for the owner, Hudson News of East Rutherford, N.J.

The possible demise caused shock and dismay yesterday in Harvard Square, where shoppers took it as a wrenching sign of a rapidly changing world, where print news is dying and chain stores have taken over, even in a square once celebrated for its eclectic diversity. To many, Out of Town News had seemed an unmovable part of the Harvard Square experience, as likely to disappear as Harvard University's wrought iron gates across the street.